He lost his balance and fell to the ground, but the foot tied by Hua Jian remained motionless in mid-air, making his current posture extremely bizarre.
This scene caused the nearby Cultivators to show expressions of schadenfreude.
‘That’s what you get for being tempted by beauty. Serves you right! Feeling regret now?’
Hua Jian ignored the strange expressions of the surrounding Cultivators.
Her vines were exploring the Cultivator’s foot inch by inch. With such a meticulous search, she actually found a clue.
A transparent needle as thin as a hair was pulled out of the young Cultivator’s foot.
“This should be the culprit that poisoned you,” Hua Jian said softly, her vine curling around the thin needle.
The young Cultivator, who had been too pained to speak, stopped gasping.
Forcing himself to stand up despite the pain, he leaned in to the vine to carefully examine the thin needle pulled from his foot.
About 10 seconds later, he let out a long sigh of relief. Like a resentful spirit whose wish had been fulfilled, he turned into a white light and disappeared from the Secret Realm.
Knowing the truth behind his poisoning before being sent out of the Secret Realm was probably a good thing.
“What about you guys? Do you want me to pull the needles out for you too?” Hua Jian turned to ask the other Cultivators.
The Cultivators shook their heads. They had seen the boy twitching in pain just now.
The result would be the same whether the needles were pulled or not, so why bother?
It would be suffering for nothing.
Seeing the group being so uncooperative, Hua Jian sighed helplessly. It seemed she was still being too kind.
“Since you’re all going to be sent out of the Secret Realm anyway, you might as well provide some last bit of value.”
Hua Jian loosened her wrists and walked toward the uncooperative Cultivators.
Vines surged out from the soil beneath their feet, binding their hands and legs.
“Tell me one by one: where did the toxin appear? If you don’t talk, I’ll just have to search every single spot.”
Hua Jian threatened them gloomily. ‘Did you really think I was a good person? My polite behavior earlier was just showing some respect—the courtesy before the force.’
Now that she knew these people carried clues about the attacker, Hua Jian wouldn’t let them leave with that information.
‘Your meaningless journey in this Secret Realm should at least serve some purpose at the end, right?’
“Is it here?” Hua Jian pierced a vine into a Cultivator’s ankle.
“Not there, not there! It’s the other foot!” the Cultivator screamed in a hurry.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier if you just said so earlier?” Hua Jian rolled her eyes.
After searching the correct spot, she indeed found a similar transparent needle.
After setting aside the victim, who was too pained to speak, she walked toward the others with a sunny smile.
For the next dozen minutes, screams echoed throughout the forest as if a monster were torturing the Cultivators.
From a certain perspective, Hua Jian’s current image in their minds was probably no different from a monster.
“You might as well just give me a quick end!” the last Cultivator complained after Hua Jian removed the needle.
He had been hit by a needle in the neck. Hua Jian had carefully removed it without harming him, but he felt it would have been better if she had just been rough and snapped his neck.
If you said Hua Jian was a bad person, she was actually quite careful and didn’t have any intention of harming them.
But if you said she was a good person… look at what she was doing. Is this something a good person would do?
She was neither good nor evil, making it impossible for people to figure out what kind of person she was.
“I’m not a villain. Why would I give you a quick end? If I did, I’d have to carry the karma of your deaths on my hands. I’d be the one losing out.” Hua Jian snorted.
“If you don’t want to suffer, just trigger the teleportation mechanism on your tokens and leave. It’s not like anyone is stopping you.”
Cultivators could trigger their tokens to leave the Secret Realm on their own, but almost no one would do so.
After all, a bad life is better than a good death. Who knew if there would be a turn for the better later?
But these Cultivators could hardly count on any change. The poison had already entered their organs.
Even if a miraculous doctor were alive, they would likely be powerless against their condition.
Not to mention, there were no miraculous doctors here.
This group had been poisoned around the same time, and their time to be sent out of the Secret Realm was also similar.
Hua Jian waited for about half an hour, and the Cultivators were sent out one after another.
Once they had all left, Linglong slowly descended on the Flying Sword.
She had a stern face and was about to remind Hua Jian that she shouldn’t act this way, but the words died in her throat.
Hua Jian was still in the middle of the Ascension Gathering. If she spoke up to remind her, it would be considered interfering with Hua Jian’s actions.
Furthermore… in what capacity would she be speaking to Hua Jian now? They were currently nothing more than ordinary friends.
“What’s with that look?”
“Nothing. I just felt like you were acting a bit like a villain just now.” Linglong eventually chose to give a subtle reminder.
Hua Jian understood what Linglong meant, but she felt she hadn’t done anything wrong.
Although she had used a bit of force, she hadn’t actually done anything to harm the Cultivators. In fact, she had even helped them remove the source of their illness.
“You have to be flexible with your thinking. Some people just don’t listen to reason.” She curled her lip and held her harvest out to Linglong. “Let’s not talk about that. Take a look at these needles.”
The needles neatly arranged in Hua Jian’s palm looked like they were made of a crystal-like material.
However, Hua Jian had used her vines to feel their strength earlier and found that they possessed a certain degree of flexibility.
This wasn’t an inorganic object; it was a part of a living creature.
The unknown creature causing trouble in the Eastern Jungle was either something the Saint Sect had intentionally thrown into the Secret Realm or it was another Cultivator’s pet.
Actually, there wasn’t much of a difference between the two guesses. The opponent’s goal was to cause trouble. Hua Jian had to assume the worst.
‘Let’s guess it’s a person and a beast, and count the person’s combat power as well.’
“They look a bit like something from the Five Poisons Peak of the Wanling Sect.” Linglong stared at the needles for a while and gave a hesitant answer.
She felt that this probably didn’t count as interfering with Hua Jian’s trial.
She was just offering a hypothesis that she herself wasn’t even sure about. It would be the same if someone else were here.
If it were a question she was certain about, she wouldn’t have answered.
“Um, you’re not trying to settle a personal grudge, are you?” Hua Jian looked at Linglong cautiously.
Hearing the words “Five Poisons Peak of the Wanling Sect” from Linglong’s mouth made it impossible for her to tell if Linglong was joking.
Some Cultivators had been poisoned, but some were still in relatively good condition.
Hua Jian also went down to ask about the situation and received another piece of information from them: a thick black cloud had risen in the east, giving the Cultivators a very ominous feeling.
The reason these Cultivators fled the jungle was half out of fear of the “ghosts” circulating in the forest, and half out of dread toward the black clouds that were gradually pressing in.
‘Great, it really is a Poison Circle now.’ Hua Jian took a sharp breath.
She had only been thinking about it randomly before; she hadn’t expected the Saint Sect to actually implement a Poison Circle.
These Cultivators had been scared away. But if someone was brave enough to stay inside the black clouds, how would the Saint Sect handle them?
Direct elimination? Or send a powerful Cultivator to finish them off?
Hua Jian felt it would be the latter. At this point, nothing the Saint Sect did would surprise her anymore.
……
“Everything is normal? You call that situation normal?!”
In the Floating Pavilion above the Eastern Jungle, three junior proctors from the Penglai Sword Sect and the Tiandao Sect were engaged in a heated discussion about a matter that was giving them a major headache.
Starting two days ago, a large amount of Black Mist had appeared on the edges of the Secret Realm.
This Black Mist had the ability to interfere with communications. Once inside, one would completely lose contact with the outside world.
While their attention was drawn to the mysterious person in the jungle, the Black Mist had worsened by the day.
Now, it had swallowed nearly half of the Eastern Jungle they were overseeing.
This was clearly an abnormal situation, but every time they contacted the outside, they received the same response: “Everything is normal.”
Normal, my foot!
There was a murderer roaming the forest, and Black Mist was rapidly spreading from the edges of the Secret Realm.
This Ascension Gathering was simply riddled with problems!
And the ones outside were just acting as if it were none of their business, still claiming everything was normal.
To the west, there was also no movement.
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